That's it, I can take no more, it's time to suspend suspensions

Groove has a "feature" called suspension. This is supposed to be a way of managing space members who are off-line for a long time. Nice idea, but frankly the function simply does not work. It does not deal properly with people who are off-line a long time and definitely can destroy productivity in those who are on-line.

And remember we are not just talking about a tool that is working or not working - we are talking fundamental fuinctionality. The act of suspension is akin to your credit card or bank overdraft being suddenly pulled from underneath you. It is that dramatic. It also acts for two groups of people, suspendees and suspenders. So usually this automatically affects double the number of people.

We are talking crisis.

What is suspension supposed to achieve? Well if you read the scant information supplied it is supposed to conserve disk space. Ok, so my Groove environment runs to 3gigs of data. How much disk space are we talking about - 10meg, 100meg? As far as I am concerned I would not be concerned with a 1/3rd of my disk space being held used to obviate suspnsions. And because of the importance I would probably go higher than that. For many / most people disk space is simply not an issue and the sooner GN get used to that the better. What people want need is functionality. So some trite message implying how hard GVO is working to keep your disk in trim really does not help. It really doesn't.

My guess is that there is a hidden agenda. My guess is that what is really going on is that Groove has internal buffers for sending and receiving data and excessive deltas left hanging round might blow these buffers and/or hamper performance. And that is why Groove insists on suspensions.

Let us take a step back in time. My first Christmas working inside Groove - was it 2001? And we ran an global exercise "How Many Users Can Groove Cope With...", a veritable stress test over two-three weeks in which suspension problem featured heavily with a notion negatively coined as black-balling. I remember Ashok being a particular problem because of his flaky dial-up connection. On that occasion 150 users was blowing stacks inside Groove and automatic suspensions were happening. And the reason at that time for the extra emphasis was that suspension occured at the moment of space invitation. Well that problem is gone - and well done GN for resoving it. But suspensions have continued to be an issue. Less of a problem yes - that is until now.

To give you another idea as to the widespread reach of the suspension effect, I would suspect that almost every Groove user has suffered from suspension at some time in their Groove career. If true then that is in itself an appalling statistic.

Why are suspensions bad? They are bad because they largely affect the wrong people. I mean my account is guaranteed on-line 24/7 on more than one computer - each of which has a full-on internet connection. Why ever should my account get suspended - ever. WHY?

Suspensions are bad because suspensions solve a problem that often does not exist. They are trying to conserve disk space. I have never heard once of someone complaining of disk space issues associated with suspensions. Not once. I have requested further information to be made available such as showing buffer sizes, but nothing has been done.

They are bad because they are automatic. Lack of control is something that really hits one's confidence. If there was some warning saying something like "in two days time XXX will happen unless..." But no, suspension just happens.

Suspensions are bad because they affect a fundamental part of Groove functionality. They hit at the heart of Groove. The heart of Groove is being a fully paid up member of a certain space.

Suspensions are bad because they can begin to occur when activity picks up. So a team has been considering using Groove, gets everything ready and are then the project is held up for a month. Then later Ready, Steady, .... Just when a project starts to say - "ok start using Groove". Suspend.

And the final nail in the suspension coffin is that different members see different pictures of suspension. Rarely when suspensions happen is everyone in tune and even worse it is almost impossible for each to find out the "situation". For example I have a space in which I have just been suspended. Initially I say that someone else was suspended, so I invited them. I logon to two other accounts. Neither show any suspensions. I post data to force updates - they're ok.

So as far as I am concerned it is time to suspend suspensions.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 3:23